Skyhook

James Bond and Claudine 'boob-a-licious' Auger in Thunderball

All airports have airport codes. Anyone who has traveled by air in the USA is probably familiar with some of the big ones like Atlanta (ATL), Chicago (ORD), LA (does anyone even say Los Angeles anymore?) (LAX), Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) and Portland (PDX). Okay, not everyone knows PDX, I just threw that in there because I go there ten times a year. Even no account little podunk airports like Hillsboro (HIO, my neighborhood airport) and Pinal Airpark (MJZ), just North of Tuscon, have codes.

Pinal Airpark, Marana Arizona. Notice that you can see the entire 6,000 foot long runway AND you can count the airliners. Flippin' airliners are big.

    Iaman paid a visit to MJZ this week and saw a bunch of airliners parked there. Last year when Boeing's Dreamliner was grounded a bunch of them ended up here. Seems that since Boeing went to so much trouble to set up their international assembly line to build these planes, they were loath to shut it down just because the FAA says they weren't allowed to fly them. Well, they could fly them, they just weren't allowed to carry any passengers. I mean how else were they going to get them from their final assembly plant in Everett (just north of Seattle), Washington to Tuscon, which is where MJZ is?
    MJZ is currently the largest boneyard for civilian aircraft. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is just down the road and it dwarfs Pinal by a factor of, oh, I dunno, a zillion to one or so. Typical Americans. Whine about having to pay an extra $50 for airfare but willingly fork over thousands of dollars every year so the Air Force's flyboys can go for joyrides anytime they want in their supersonic hotrods. That's democracy in action for you, although I fail to see how this aspect is any different than communism. Never mind, that's all beside the point. I'll try to stay on track here.
    There is another civilian boneyard in Roswell, New Mexico. They store old airlines, but they are also strong in the scrap metal business.

Pinal Airpark got it's start in WW2 training pilots for the military as part of the "50,000 pilot training program". During the Vietnam war it was home to the CIA's Intermountain Airlines. Intermountain eventually became part of Evergreen Aviation, based in McMinnville, Oregon (just down the road from here), which is where the Spruce Goose ended up.

     Robert Fulton started development of his skyhook there. Hard to tell how often it was used for real, I mean it was basically a clandestine activity. We do have videos from some of the tests and the ones in the movies. The Air Force kept it in their back pocket until 1996 when they finally decided to let it go.

There is also an automobile racetrack here. The local Porsche club seems to be only ones who use it.

Update July 2021 replaced missing video.

Roswell Boneyard

So I'm reading about the balloon launch scheduled to go off this morning in New Mexico, which reminds me of Felix's record setting jump from the Red Bull balloon last year about this time, which was also in New Mexico. Two balloon launches from New Mexico, gotta be the same place, right? Nope. One's in Fort Sumner, the other is in Roswell. Let's look at Roswell.


View Big Science in a larger map Gee willickers, there are a whole lot of airplanes parked there. That's not an Air Force Base, is it? No, it was one once, but now it's a boneyard for airliners


I don't much care for TV news, but this one report managed to squeeze in a whole bunch of numbers, numbers that you don't usually hear about.

Airplane of the Day - Canberra Redux

Martin WB-57

Martin WB-57

WB-57 (the weather bomber?) comes from the RB-57, the reconnaissance version, which in turn was derived from the B-57 which was a licensed copy of the English Electric Canberra. The English plane first flew in 1949, 72 years ago. 

NASA operates three WB-57's. One had been mothballed back in 1974. NASA pulled it from the boneyard in 2011 and refurbished it. It took to the air in 2013.

In the 1950's the Canberra was at the top of the heap. Flight records set by Canberras

• January 1951 – first non-stop unrefuelled transatlantic crossing by a jet.
• August 1952 – the prototype B.5 made the first double transatlantic crossing by a jet.
• May 1953 – world altitude record 63,668 ft
• October 1953 – winner of the London-Christchurch Air Race. 12,270 miles
• August 1955 – altitude record 65,889 ft
• August 1957 – altitude record 70,310 ft

Previous post about the Canberra.

B-52

B-52H Stratofortress Damage Inc II being transported to Oklahoma - April McDonald

Defence Blog has the story. This B-52 was pulled from the boneyard and is going to be used "as an integration model to test how well new technologies and current and future modifications will integrate with B-52 aircraft."

I guess that's a good idea. I mean if you have an extra airframe lying around it could be handy for seeing how the new parts are going to fit. There is a big program to replace the jet engines on the B-52 fleet, which is also kind of good. If you can get another 30 years of use out of these airplanes by replacing the engines, well, why not?

Except the B-52 is already 70 years old. Even the newest ones are 60 years old. You would think that a newer design would be more better, but we already tried that with the B-1 and the B-2. The B-1 and B-2 might be great aircraft, but they are gawd awful expensive. They make the zillion dollars being spent on the B-52 look like chump change, which is probably why it got the go ahead.

I suspect the military-industrial complex is a bloated hog and would be much improved if the excess gas could be released, but that is unlikely to happen. Power, money and herd mentality are the order of the day and things are unlikely to change unless we run into an iceberg.

Pic of the Day

Airliner graveyard in Victorville California

Google Maps provides almost the same view.

Airliner graveyard in Victorville California

More boneyard posts.
Via Posthip Scott

747 Global SuperTanker

747 Global SuperTanker

What a great photo! Just look at that airplane, all bright red, white & shiny! Unfortunately, fire fighting is a marginal business and the company operating this airplane has shut down. If someone else doesn't step up it may headed to the boneyard.

How do you scrap an old Boeing 747 aeroplane
quickpremiernews

In the video, Mark says they removed 150 tons of equipment and are left with 100 tons of aircraft. Wikipedia shows a range of weights depending on model, but all around 200 tons. Passenger load might be 35 tons and fuel load would be 200 tons.